SJ Sheriff Moore leaves complicated legacy

Saturday

Feb 2, 2019 at 5:38 PM

STOCKTON — One month before he left office, former San Joaquin County Sheriff Steve Moore held a microphone at a Board of Supervisors meeting and summed up 12 years in 21 words.

Addressing the men and women who served under him during his regime, Moore said, “I’ve worked with them, I’ve barked at them, we hollered, screamed, cried together, did everything else. We got the job done.”

But Moore’s years in office were vastly more complex than portrayed by his farewell.

When he took office at the start of 2007, it was a moment when the Sheriff’s Office was reeling from scandal.

During the years that followed, Moore steered his department through the Great Recession, but also landed in the midst of controversy on more than one occasion.

And now, four weeks after the end of his tenure, it is left to Moore’s replacement, and others, to look back on his time in office. Moore, 63, did not respond to several interview requests last week.

“I believe my predecessor just looked at the job as the CEO of a company, and the most important thing was the bottom line of that company,” new Sheriff Pat Withrow, who unseated Moore in the June election, said last week.

“To his credit, he was able to get us through tough times when there were major cuts to our department,” Withrow added, referring to Moore’s leadership during the nation’s economic crisis of the late 2000s. But as the economy recovered, Withrow said, “I believe (Moore) just never came out of that mode (of budget hawkishness) and I feel that’s how he judged his success as sheriff.”

Though Moore did not respond last week, previously he has said he was proud to have established a “community cars” program that put more deputies in contact with the public, and also took pride in programs that fostered young people’s interest in pursuing law enforcement careers. And though it took his entire tenure to reach his biggest goal, Moore left office knowing a new county jail is finally in the pipeline.

After losing the election, Moore put his defeat in perspective.

“This isn’t the end of the world,” he said. “I’ve had a good run.”

Moore’s start in law enforcement came as a 16-year-old trainee with the Police Department in his native Oxnard. Later, he served as an Oxnard patrolman for six years before joining the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office in 1982.

Through the years, Moore served as a deputy, sergeant, lieutenant and captain, and was appointed as an assistant sheriff in 2004.

He even took a step backward at one point. In 1992, during a period of budget cuts, Moore served as a deputy after a previous promotion to lieutenant. Moore has said previously that the 1992 economic downturn prepared him for the economic crisis that struck during his first term as sheriff.

“Learning through that process, I was able to foresee things coming up again so when the next bad downturn started we were able to start making changes ahead of time and we were able to retain the majority of all of our staff so we could continue to provide the service to the county,” Moore said late last year.

His career as sheriff began amid the rubble of the Baxter Dunn regime, which ended with Moore’s predecessor convicted of felony mail fraud (Dunn later was exonerated). Moore bested four opponents in the sheriff’s race of 2006, including Elbert Holman, who would go on to serve for a decade on the Stockton City Council.

“I found him to be an effective sheriff,” said Holman, who was vice mayor of Stockton when he termed out of office at the end of 2018. “It was right after the Baxter Dunn regime. I thought (Moore) brought stability to the department and uplifted the morale of the department.”

Still, Moore faced several controversies of his own during his regime:

• Dr. Bennet Omalu and Dr. Susan Parson, the county’s forensic pathologists, resigned in late 2017, accusing Moore of reclassifying several homicides as accidents to cover up causes of death during arrest or custody. In the aftermath, supervisors voted to establish an independent medical-examiner office to replace the county’s long-standing coroner/sheriff structure.

• Moore and some deputies allegedly bought evidence guns at steep discounts. “Gungate” did not result in charges.

• Thousands of pieces of evidence allegedly disappeared from the Sheriff’s Office, and human remains of victims of serial killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog were alleged to have been mishandled.

The matters became campaign fodder as Withrow completed his successful effort to unseat Moore last year. But Withrow said Moore was accommodating during the transition to a new sheriff.

“When he allowed us into the building in December, he met with us and gave us all the information we needed to move forward on projects that were currently underway,” Withrow said.

“I believe at that time we both put our personal feelings aside and did what was best for the Sheriff’s Office and the people of San Joaquin County.”

Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, said Moore was always open to differences of opinion.

“I’ve been with him on some things and against him on other things,” Eggman told Moore during December’s sendoff by the Board of Supervisors. “But you and I have always been able to have a phone call, a conversation, and be able to come to common agreements. I think that’s the true sign of a public servant.”